Born in the U.S.A.

Happy late 4th of July to all! As you can probably imagine, there's not a whole lot of July 4th celebration in England, but there were plenty of American students from my program perpetuating the stereotype of the obnoxious American last night. Most notably the drunk student I could hear in the quad outside my window singing the chorus of "Born in the U.S.A."

I also got to speak with my friends and family that I normally spend the 4th with...I miss them and hope they had a blast at the celebrations at Lenox last night. "Is it an alllllll play?"

What's also interesting about the "Born in the U.S.A." reference is its correlation with my international mass communication class with Dr. Andy Kavoori from UGA. This ranks high on my list of favorite classes in college, and that's saying something (considering we've had 3 days of class in total). We sang bits from that song in celebration of the 4th, and one of the kids in my class noted the irony in singing it on the holiday. If you listen to the lyrics, it's clearly referencing the Vietnam War and doesn't really serve as a good patriotic, nationalistic anthem, he said. Good point.

But seriously, this class with Dr. Kavoori is great. Our class is mainly discussion based, and we've got a great class of extremely interesting people. Yesterday, the class invited Kavoori to a local pub called the White Horse for some obnoxious 4th of July celebration, but he told us this morning in class that he couldn't go because he was taking his kids around the city all day on the 4th. One of my more animated classmates, Jen, walks in and immediately yells, "Kavoori! Where were you last night?" The entire class erupted in laughter. Then we went into a detailed discussion of his novel, The Children of Shahida, and how history and memory relate to one another in a book about three generations of an Indian family. The books is really good -- it's told in three parts, with the narrators sharing stories and thoughts on family life, culture, and other topics.

At the end of the discussion, he asked us how we thought he should market his book. "I need to sell about 5,000 copies, so how should I do it?" he asked us. My classmates and I came up with a number of ideas, ranging from easily manageable to completely ridiculous. Here are just a few:

• make a video of a scene from the book or make a movie trailer for it and post it on YouTube
  
• go to the Indian Cultural Exchange club at UGA (which is the largest student organization on campus)
• find a way onto a tv show like the Today Show or get the book added to Oprah's Book Club list
• the idea his son came up with -- rename it Harry Potter and the Children of Shahida
• make a Facebook or Myspace group (for those who don't know, these are popular websites for teenagers and college students) to promote it
• get it on other book club lists

The possibilities are endless.

EDIT 1: More pictures here!

High Dinners and Harry Potter

11:34 p.m. Oxford time
Day 2 at Oxford -- Lots to see and do today as we acclimated ourselves a bit more to the town of Oxford. We took a walking tour of the city this morning, taking note of several of the 39 separate colleges that make up the university and their personal libraries and chapels. There were plenty of references to celebrities that attended different colleges and even some Harry Potter locations! Scenes from the hospital wing, the library, and the courtyard where Malfoy was turned into a ferret all reside within New College, University College, and the Bodleian Library. My new friend Michelle and I plan to set aside a day sometime this weekend to fully explore said locations.

Take the building in this first picture for instance -- our tour guide Andrew told us that Hugh Grant and Kate Beckinsale both attended New College, pictured here (more pictures of this building to come later...this was the only part of New College we saw on the walk). This college is also interesting because it's dedicated to the Virgin Mary...that's her in the middle with the Archangel Gabriel on her left and William of Wykeham on the right, who founded the college. Added bonus: behind the left wall is where the Malfoy scene was shot in the Goblet of Fire. As I said, I will be checking that out later.

Our next trip (after Michelle and I stopped in a sandwich shop for lunch) was to the Bodleian Library. Now, I'm going to bore you for a minute with some details about it, so feel free to skip a paragraph or two if you don't care too much about libraries. This one is one of Oxford's 34 libraries and it contains over 12 million books! After the Reformation took its toll on the library (most books with any associations to the Catholic Church were burned), a man called Bodley reinstated it and turned it into a reference-only library and made a deal with the government so that it became a legal deposit library -- it's "entitled to claim a copy of every book and periodical part published in the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland," according to our information packet.

Other cool facts about it:

• The scenes from the hospital wing and the library in the Harry Potter movies were filmed in it!
• The 12 million books are stored in the main building (pictured here) as well as another building across the street and one around the corner. The building across the street has more floors below the street level than above the street, where there are MILES of stacks of books.
  
• When looking for a place to study and to find books, you choose the room that best suits your studies. There are reading rooms designated for different subjects, and if your book isn't located in it, you request it online. But this is the best part: once you order it, it's put in a crate in the underground floor, then put on a conveyor belt underground that sends it to a lift in the main building and a librarian takes it to the proper room. How cool is that?!
• When being admitted to use the library, you must recite and sign an oath saying that you will not take a book, set the place on fire, and abide by the rest of the rules. After this, you get a reader's card with your picture on it that must be shown to the porter to get in. Only Oxford students and graduate students with specific needs ("...who need access in order to undertake serious study which they cannot easily do elsewhere") can go in.

We had some free time after the library orientation before meeting the Oxford dons who will be teaching our tutorials (I'll meet with my Romantic Lit professor every Wednesday afternoon from 2:45-3:45) and having our first High Dinner. Everyone dresses "smartly" and we have a 3-course meal with the dons. Tonight's menu:

1. 1/2 Ogen Melon with Earl Grey Sorbet
2. Poached Barramundi Supreme with Chive Mash, Pea Puree and Asparagus Veloute
3. Iced Strawberry Souffle

Everything was delicious -- even the second course, which was fish with a layer of mashed potatoes and mashed peas underneath and asparagus cut in inch-long pieces. I'm usually not a fan of fish, but this tasted more like very bland chicken, so it worked. I'm looking forward to next week's Monday-night High Dinner.

Okay, I think I've said enough. And you're probably bored reading all this. So I'm off!

EDIT 1: If you want to see more pictures, just click this link and enjoy!

"A Rainy Day in London Town"

8:37 p.m. Oxford time
I'm finally here!

Jolly old England. Oxford, to be more precise. I'm staying in a dorm at Trinity College, right on Broad Street in the heart of Oxford. The trip here was...interesting...but it doesn't matter now because I'm loving it here!

The flight from Atlanta to London was pretty enjoyable. We departed at about 6:45 p.m. Atlanta time and arrived earlier than predicted (6:45 instead of the previously anticipated 7:30) early in the morning in London. I've definitely decided that international flights beat the pants off domestic flights -- better (and more) food, a personal screen at every seat, plenty of radio/movie choices, higher ceilings, and flight attendants with British accents in my case. Word to the wise, though -- if you want to sleep sometime on the flight, either take something like Tylenol PM or get a first class seat where you can recline your seats all the way back. Otherwise, don't count on getting much sleep.

Once we arrived, the only real hitch was making it through the passport check-in area and finding our bus to Oxford. The masses of people arriving into Gatwick Airport (including myself and my fellow UGA at Oxford people) stood in long, zig-zagging lines to reach the five or so desks where attendants stamped your passport. It seemed very unorganized if you ask me...

I slept on the bus ride between London and Oxford and woke up when we were heading into the main streets of Oxford. I've taken lots of pictures already, which will be up in the next few days. My single occupancy room with loft next to the Broad Street entrance and the Trinity Library definitely helps lol. And I've already walked along the main parts of town.

My first stops were, of course, at the several bookstores within a block of campus. I reserved my copy of the last Harry Potter book and bought my remaining textbooks. Can I just say that Blackwell's 3-story bookstore makes me so happy -- there should be more bookstores like that in the States!

More to come soon. I'm off to bed. Thanks for reading and I'll post again soon!

Crazy Headlines

In my news editing class, we've been talking recently about how to write a good headline for a news story. This doesn't seem like a difficult task at first glance--write a complete thought that tells the reader about the main thrust of the article. Easy enough, right?

Well, in some cases, copy editors and page designers who create headlines accidently write ones that have more than one meaning or seem just plain silly. In my Creative Editing textbook, the authors list several "ambiguous and confusing" headlines that were actually printed in newspapers across the country. Check these out:

In the category of stating the obvious, we have:

• "War Dims Hope for Peace"
• "If Strike Isn't Settled Quickly, It May Last a While"
• "Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures"
• "Farmer Bill Dies in House"

Funny Claims:

• "Hospitals are Sued by 7 Foot Doctors" (7-foot doctors or 7 podiatrists?)
• "Eye Drops off Shelf" (I'd like to see that)
• "Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge" (avoid that bridge at all costs)
• "Air Head Fired" (hahahaha)

How could you read these and not stop and think about it?

• "Include Your Children When Baking Cookies"
• "Kids Make Nutritious Snacks"
• "New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group"
• "Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead"

I'm Going to England, Baby!

Dear UGA at Oxford Applicant,

Thank you very much for your application to the Summer 2007 Grady at Oxford Program. We are very pleased to inform you that you have been chosen to participate in the Grady program.

These were the first few lines of the e-mail I received last night letting me know that I've been accepted into the Grady College's summer program at Oxford. I'll admit it--I jumped up and down and called at least 10 people within a 20-minute time frame when I found out. And now I can send in my passport application and reread my copy of Notes From a Small Island by Bill Bryson in preparation for my trip.

"Perhaps I'm too hard on poor old Oxford. I mean it is basically a wonderful place, with its smokey pubs and bookshops and scholarly air, as long as you fix your gaze on the good things and never go anywhere near Cornmarket or George Street."

Stay away from Cornmarket and George Street--check.

"I like wandering up St. Giles to immerse myself in the busy conviviality of Brown's Restaurant--a wonderful, friendly place where, perhaps uniquely in Britain, you can get an excellent Caesar salad and a bacon cheeseburger without having to sit among pounding music and a lot of ersatz Route 66 signs. Above all, I like to drink in the pubs, where you can sit with a book and not be looked on as a social miscreant; where you can be among laughing, lively young people and lose yourself in reveries of what it was like when you, too, had energy and a flat stomach and thought of sex as something more than a welcome chance to lie down for a while."

Thanks Bill.

The Final Chapter

I can't believe it. It's the beginning of the end of the Harry Potter series as we know it. J.K. Rowling and Scholastic announced yesterday that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be released July 21, 2007, just one week after the fifth movie (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) premieres. Wow. I can't believe it. You can already preorder the book at Borders or Barnes and Noble.

I really didn't think it would be released so close to the new movie, or even released this summer. It's bittersweet...I want to know what happens in the final book, but then it will be over. For good.

For more information, you can see the New York Times article
or check out Mugglenet.com.

What's the Story, Wishbone?

"What's the story, Wishbone? Do you think it's worth a look? It kinda seems familiar, like a story from a book..."

It's been argued that child literacy has grown drastically since the release of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, but I wonder if the PBS series Wishbone had any effect on literacy for people in my generation.

For those of you who never watched it or haven't heard of it, the Wishbone series follows Joe Talbot and his Jack Russell Terrier, Wishbone. Joe lives with his mom (his dad passed away when he was six) in Oakdale, Texas, and spends most of his time playing basketball and hanging out with his two best friends, David and Samantha. As the kids deal with situations in their day-to-day lives, Wishbone relates what's going on in their lives to a great literary classic, like Great Expectations, The Odyssey, and Robin Hood. The show switches back and forth between the real action in Oakdale and the action in the book. Wishbone would usually play one of the main characters in the book and don a costume to complete the look.

I remember watching the show every afternoon and wanting to read the books they featured on the show. In fact, I chose to read The Red Badge of Courage for a book report in middle school simply because the book was used in an episode. I'd be willing to bet that other kids felt the same way. Now, I enjoyed reading to begin with (mostly Nancy Drew books at the time) but I think that watching the show fueled the fire, so to speak. And I think they should definitely put it back on tv (and not just so I can watch it again).

There's a Wishbone website and a Wikipedia entry that discuss the show, and now even a facebook group called "No, I haven't read that great literary classic--but I've seen the Wishbone!" I think that's true for a lot of people, including myself. There were lots of books on the show that I've never read (like Ivanhoe and Silas Marner) but whenever I'm about to read one in a class, I try to remember if there was a Wishbone episode that explained it.